Yarn Review: Knitpicks Chroma Fingering Sock Yarn

I purchased a skein of KnitPicks Chroma (fingering weight; they've since released a worsted) for the second iteration of my Idiot-Proof Sideways Scarf pattern. I'd never ordered KnitPicks yarn before, and had seen a number of mixed reviews of it on Ravelry, so I was a little bit nervous.

There's something of a bias in the knitting community against the use of cheap yarn. "You get what you pay for" is the mantra of the Local Yarn Shop Owner, trying to compete with both craft store yarns and cheap online retailers like KnitPicks and Elann.com. For the most part, I have found most craft store yarns to be lacking (though some of them do have their uses, like dishcloths or scrubbies), but had never tried KnitPicks yarn until now. I'd heard rumors of knotted skeins, fading/bleeding colors, misleading weights, skimpy yardage, and, of course, the knitter's worst nightmare: pilling/fuzzing. I decided that $8.99 a skein was too good an offer to pass up, and bought one in the Galapagos colorway.

Overall, I am very pleased with this yarn. The colors were pretty much exactly as pictured, except for a light green that showed up grey on my monitor. It looked just as nice, though, so I don't care. The colors transitioned from one to another very nicely, and the whole skein was very well-coordinated. The yardage, from my calculations, was spot-on. It was evenly spun, and had consistent thickness throughout. It also felt nice to knit with, and wasn't scratchy or sheddy or anything else that can make knitting unpleasant. It also blocked out beautifully, and I am very pleased with how the scarf I knit from it turned out (pictures tomorrow). The finished scarf is very soft and nice to wear (none of that stereotypical wool scratchiness!), and the colors survived the Eucalan wash I give all of my knitwear before I block it. The water did turn a little blue, which is typical as blue dye can have "stickiness" issues, but I didn't see any fading or bleeding.

I do have a few quibbles, though. First, Chroma fingering is advertised as a sock yarn. I would strongly recommend against using it for socks (or anything else that gets heavy wear), as it's a single ply that's not spun very tightly. It's a recipe for pilling. It's also not superwash, which I found downright weird for a wool/nylon blend. I'm not a fan of using handwash wool in socks, as they will often felt right on your feet, between the friction of the shoe and foot sweat! My second issue is that it tends to fuzz while you're knitting with it, and would advise anyone who uses it to avoid frogging it. I had to rip out a few rows at the beginning, and it really didn't look as nice after that. Luckily, the fuzziness issue appears to go away once the yarn has been washed and blocked.

My last, and saddest, complaint was that my skein had a knot in it! That really drives me nuts, even though I recognize on an intellectual level that they're inevitable. At least whoever milled the yarn took the time to make sure the second strand matched the first one. That's one of my biggest pet peeves about noro: not only are the skeins crazy knotty, but when you arrive at a knot, it'll have skipped several colors, resulting in you having to go through the entire skein looking for the right place to rejoin the two strands. In my Chroma skein, the color on one side of the knot and the color on the other side of the knot were the same, I was able to splice them together without incident, and the color pattern was uninterrupted as a result. So I guess that was nice, even though knots annoy me.

Overall, I give it 4 out of 5 stars. Even with the fuzziness and knot, it's still a very beautiful yarn and a great value for the money.

Yarn Review: Noro Sekku

In short, I hate it.

In long:

I noticed on Ravelry that Noro had launched some new yarn lines, many of which do not include mohair (which I can't knit with because my skin is sensitive), and was interested in trying them out. I've used several of Noro's products before, and, apart from my tragic mohair sensitivity, had always been satisfied. I picked up a couple of skeins of Color 08 of Sekku at Yarn Paradise a few weeks ago, intending to use it for a scarf. I wound up sorely disappointed for the following reasons:

1. The colors are kind of "eh." While they still have the vibrancy and quirkiness associated with Noro, the transitions are awkward and jarring. Pee yellow, snot green, and poo brown should not be stacked on top of one another, especially not when scab red is involved (I hereby move we change the name of Color 08 to "Bodily Fluids"). The light gray was a much better neutral, and made the shift between the aforementioned colors and the teal, turquoise, and dark blue in the rest of the skein a little more natural. I found myself having to remove most of the brown in order to make the colors look decent together. While this critique is primarily directed at the specific colorway I purchased, I noticed that several other colorways had similar issues.
2. While the "rustic," uneven spin of Noro works well for yarns that are fingering weight or heavier, it's a really bad idea in laceweight. Both the super-thin and the underspun bits of the yarn break if you look at them sideways. I wound up having to hold two strands together, which meant I had to abandon my original project idea. 
3. It is really sticky and loves to fold in on itself and tangle into impossible-to-undo knots. This also makes frogging difficult. 

While I think the scarf I'm making out of it will ultimately turn out nicely, I hate feeling like I'm knitting with eggshells. It also took forever to extract the fugly colors from the ball. 

Verdict: 2.0 stars. Next time, I'm getting a ball of the sock yarn instead.